Synthetic Fuels: Environment Friendly Fuels for the Future

摘要

The development of motor vehicles and their powertrains continues to be determined by increasingly stringent emissions standards. At the same time reducing fuel consumption and CO_2 emissions is getting even more important. Another aspect in this constellation is the increasing global demand for primary energy supply and the dominance of crude oil as the primary energy source for mobility, giving rise to considerable future risks. So the most economical possible use of fuel is a major task to secure a long-term supply of energy sources for individual transportation. In addition Synthetic, liquid fuels play a major role in the integration of alternative and regenerative energy sources, as they enable the use of a multitude of diverse primary energies for generating fuels. Thanks to its high flexibility, the production process for synthetic fuels, i.e. GTL, can be used to manufacture tailor-made fuels which optimally satisfy the high demands of modern engine generations and of novel combustion schemes such as Homogenous Combustion Engines as well. In a second step, diverse forms of biomass may also be used to manufacture fuels, resulting in the creation of a biomass-to-liquid (BTL) process. Synthesis gas produced from biomass and combined with Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, leads to the creation of tailor-made CO_2-neutral BTL fuels ("SunFuels") with properties similar to GTL fuels. On a well-to-wheel basis, this dramatically reduces CO_2 emissions from vehicle operation whilst consumption remains the same. The great advantage of this method is that the current fuel infrastructure can also be retained while all fuel benefits can be realised even in the existing fleet. As has been shown already, new types of engine combustion processes, which combine the advantageous consumption of modern diesel engines with the emission potential of spark-ignition engines, will become available in the medium-term. Suitable fuels will support these advanced combustion processes. Synthetic fuels (SynFuels, subsequently SunFuels) offer the best prerequisites for achieving this. In the long-term, it is assumed that the current hydrogen storage and infrastructure problems will be solved. The road will then be open to hydrogen management, provided that overall evaluation reveals sufficient advantages. However, this is not anticipated within the next 20 years.